Barnes and Noble gift card giveaway
Melissa at From Melissa’s Desk is giving away a $25.00 Barnes and Noble Gift Card. To enter, you’ll need to go to her blog, right-click on the giveaway image and save it to your computer, then put it in a blog post linking back to her. The contest ends at11:59pm EST, Saturday, May 3rd.
Help Stamp Out Hunger! on May 10th
I’ve teamed up with M80 and Campbell’s Soup to help spread the word about the nation’s largest single-day food drive, called Stamp Out Hunger!. Both the Campbell’s Soup Company and the Harlem Globetrotters are working hard to spread the word about this important event, which has collected more than 836 million pounds of food since it began in 1993. Watch this:
And here’s some important information:
• The Stamp Out Hunger! drive is a nationwide effort to provide food to local food banks and pantries, which would otherwise have depleted stocks during the summer months, to help feed the hungry on a daily basis.
• The nation’s 230,000 letter carriers will be collecting food donations in more than 10,000 local communities and delivering them to food bank members of America ’s Second Harvest – The Nation’s Food Bank Network and other hunger relief organizations.
• Last year the letter carriers collected more than 70 million pounds of food from generous Americans, bringing their impressive total to more than 836 million pounds since 1993.
• Campbell Soup Company is supporting this important initiative by kicking off the food drive with a national donation of one million pounds of soup and other food and beverage items that will be donated to food banks across the country.
The Face of Hunger…
• According to the America ’s Second Harvest, 35 million Americans are food insecure, hungry or at risk of hunger. Approximately one in four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.
You Can Help…
• Helping Stamp Out Hunger! is as easy as checking your mailbox. Just leave a bag of non-perishable food where your letter carrier normally delivers your mail. Your letter carrier will then pick up and deliver the food to a local food bank. Examples of non-perishable items include:
• Canned soup
• Canned meats and fish
• Canned juices
• Canned vegetables and fruits
• Boxed goods (such as cereal)
• Pasta and rice
• To find out more about the annual Stamp Out Hunger! effort in your community, ask your letter carrier, contact your local post office or visit www.helpstampouthunger.com.
Please mark your calendars for this important event. I know money is tight, but items from discount grocers like Aldi are not expensive and can make such a difference. Many of us go grocery shopping every week even though there is food in our pantry-imagine if there wasn’t. I’ll be continuing to post on this topic up until the 10th, and I’ll also be giving away some pennants signed by the Harlem Globetrotters as well as calendars featuring images of the Globetrotters and other images from previous Stamp Out Hunger! events, so watch for that coming up. No one in this country should ever have to be hungry, there’s plenty of food to go around if we can just get it to the people who need it!
Let’s call it Whine and Complain Wednesday, mmkay?
I have a bad cold. Sore throat, headache, neck ache, fatigue, stuffy nose, cough.
This morning, my son went to kiss me goodbye and bumped the mug of coffee I was holding and it splashed directly into my laptop keyboard. I turned it off and turned it upside down, now it won’t turn on at all. I have no access to Microsoft Outlook, which means I don’t have my Calendar showing today’s posts that are due, nor do I have access to the email folders that I could look in to see what posts are due, nor access to all of the email addresses for all of the P.R. people who are waiting for me to write those posts.
I went to Wal-Mart to buy diapers, wipes, and three days worth of food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for five people. It cost me $172.00. For 3 days worth. At Wal-Mart. And gas is $3.74 a gallon here.
I was invited to go someplace very cool in June with my family this time, it would be an amazing weekend, but they aren’t paying for transportation. We would not be able to afford plane tickets for five people, and although it’s within driving distance, the gas would also cost more than we can afford. It’s bumming me out that I might have to say no when this is the first time my family has been invited to go someplace!
Honestly, today is just not a good day. Once my husband gets home and MAYBE fixes my laptop, I’ll have EVEN MORE work to catch up on than I already do. Whine, complain, waaaah. Send chocolate.
Baby Einstein’s Baby’s First Sounds
Even though she’s two and a half and these DVDs are meant more for younger babies, my daughter loves the DVD Baby’s First Sounds from Baby Einstein! This DVD focuses on five basic sounds: ”ah,” ”buh,” ”duh,” ”ee,” and ”mm.” Then, these sounds are connected to simple words in languages such as English, Spanish, Chinese and French and reinforced with fun puppet shows, familiar nursery rhymes and real-life images of loving parents spending together-time with their babies — all accompanied by beautiful classical music in the Baby Einstein tradition.
If your child watches TV shows where the characters speak Spanish or Chinese, the foreign language sections on this DVD will seem familiar. The music scenes are adorable, in fact my daughter asks for this “Puppets” scene over and over:
It cracks her up! I love the quality of Baby Einstein DVDs, the classical music and the terrific production quality. I like knowing that my daughter is learning something and isn’t watching commercials 
So, there you go, some info about Baby Einstein’s Baby’s First Sounds. Thanks for reading!
Frosted Flakes Gold, get your Activity on!
After 56 years of gracing the boxes of one of America’s favorite breakfast cereals, Tony the Tiger is still going strong! The newest way to feel grrrreat at breakfast is with Frosted Flakes Gold. With 10 grams of whole grain and three grams of fiber in each serving, it provides another option to give our kids the right start to their day. In addition, the cereal is baked with honey to give it that sweet taste that kids love. The flavor reminded me of another Kellogg’s cereal that I used to eat a LOT of in college, Honey Smacks.
Now, this is very cool. To encourage kids to be more active, eat right and work hard to achieve their goals, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes® created the Earn Your Stripes™ program. As part of this program, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Gold™, in partnership with the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO), Little League® International and Girls on the Run International, created the Five Golden Rules of Sportsmanship to give coaches and parents the tools they need to help kids succeed on and off the field. The Five Golden Rules advocate being a winner no matter what the scoreboard says, treating coaches, officials and opponents with respect, being a good teammate and finding good in the game.
I took a look at Earn Your Stripes™, which is on the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes website, it is REALLY comprehensive. The Sports section has interactive training videos and tips for baseball, basketball, and soccer, and I mean interactive! On the baseball page, for example (warning, there is sound), there are interactive training modules (games), training videos that teach skills and show drills, and team game ideas to practice skills in batting, throwing, and fielding. Your sports lover is SURE to enjoy spending time on the Earn Your Stripes website!
I’d like to thank MomCentral and the Kellogg company for sending my family the box of Frosted Flakes Gold for this review. I barely got a bowlful for myself because my kids liked it so much!
Looking for a credit card? Try Credit Room
Take it from me, credit cards are a lot more than just a piece of plastic you can use to purchase and pay for things. Having worked at a Credit Union, I can assure you that your credit score is something that you should take very seriously, and how you manage your credit cards plays a big part. In addition, as someone who filed bankruptcy because of credit card debt that got out of hand, I can also tell you that not only can you get credit cards even if you’ve had a problem with debt, but you should get at least one credit card so that you can build up a good credit rating and earn a high credit score.
Credit Room is a website that has pulled together information on all kinds of credit, from 0% interest cards to prepaid cards that help you build a credit rating without going into debt. The site is laid out well and is very easy to search, and has information on many different types of cards. It’s got a definite feminine slant, the tagline is “Credit Card Offers for Women”, and the logo is a businesswoman (albeit wearing a very short skirt!). By women and for women, the site has information on many types of credit cards for everyone from students to women who travel on business.
The site has links to several
No Annual Fee Credit Card Offers which can save you money if you qualify. There is also information on rewards cards, which give you something back on your purchases. For example, with the price of gas as high as it is now, you might consider a rewards card that pays you cash back on your gas purchases. Airline miles cards work by giving you points each time you book a flight, then letting you use your accumulated points to purchase plane tickets.
There is also information on the site about Travel Credit Cards, have you heard of these? You can redeem the points you accrue on not only airline tickets, but also on discounts at hotels, and you accumulate points for shopping, too! Sounds like my kind of card!
For each card listed on the site, you’ll see the interest rate, Annual and cash advance fees, as well as what kind of credit you need to qualify. The site has a link to a free credit score check (at the TransUnion website), so you’ll know which cards you are eligible to apply for. Whether you are a student with no credit or have excellent credit, you are sure to find the right kind of credit card for you at the Credit Room.
Winners of Pizza Hut Tuscani Pasta Giveaway
Congratulations goes to Amber from the blog Heavenly Hold-check out all the great baby carriers, wraps, and slings she sells!-for being chosen as the winner of a coupon good for a free pasta dinner for four from Pizza Hut! I hope Amber enjoys having piping-hot pasta delivered and not having to clean up afterwards
And congratulations to the second winner, Carol Evoski! Enjoy the pasta!
Do an herbal body wrap at home
Spas charge a LOT of money for herbal wraps, which use seaweed and other herbs slathered on your skin and covered with bandages to help tighten and firm sagging skin and cellulite. It’s much less expensive to purchase body wraps in kits you can use at home, which generally contain a seaweed mixture to which you add warm water. You apply the mixture, wrap the body part with the bandages, and relax for a half an hour or so, then unwrap and rinse off in the shower. Seaweed wraps can pull toxins from the body and help with the breaking down of body fat. Save money on body wraps by purchasing home kits rather than spending lots of money at the spa.
Fun books for kids and Moms, from Gymboree!
My 28 month old daughter soaks up information like the proverbial sponge, with her vocabulary increasing every day-she speaks in sentences now and tells us JOKES!-and she LOVES to learn new things. Even after eleven years of parenting, I am always looking for creative suggestions on ways to teach concepts and have fun at the same time, so I was thrilled to find the book Gymboree Play & Learn, 1001 fun activities for your baby and child
The book is divided into separate sections for babies ages 0+, 3+, 6+, 9+, 12+, 18+, 24+, 30+, and then years 3, 4, and 5. In the 24+ section, I found suggestions for teaching patterns using colored blocks, making a homemade sock octopus toy, tying shoe boxes together for a stuffed animal “train” (I just sent a bunch of shoe boxes to recycling, darn it!), painting sugar cookies with food coloring, teaching rhyming words, even teaching the positive side of the word “no” by asking ridiculous questions like “are we standing in the ocean right now?”. There are enough suggestions to keep us going for months!
And because she loves to “read” and be read to, I also got the Gymboree board books Shapes
Click any of the above links to go to the pages on Amazon where you can buy Play & Learn and the Shapes or Alphabet board books, you and your child are sure to enjoy them!
Eco-Friendly Pool Treatments
I don’t have a backyard pool, but if you do, I have some information to pass on to you about how you can make your pool more friendly for the environment and safer for your family. That’s right! You can enjoy your pool without using harmful salt, chlorine, or chemicals to keep it sparkling clean. Who knew?
According to their website, swimming in the natural pools sold by Ecosmarte Pools is like “swimming in bottled water”, that’s how safe the water is. In order to avoid using chlorine, some people choose to have a salt water pool instead, but that is NOT a safer option. Salt water pools use chlorine generators, which is a unit that contains salt, and as the water passes through the generator, it produces chlorine. The problem is that this creates byproducts that are messy and not easy to dispose of. What you save not buying liquid chlorine, you spend running the generator, which must run 24 hours a day 7 days a week in order to produce the amount of chlorine needed. When the generator wears out, it can cost anywhere from $400 to $1000 to replace.
You could use salt water chlorinators to help with cleaning bacteria, algae, and viruses (yuck!) from your swimming pool, but they involve the use of harsh chemicals to act as cleaning agents. Ecosmarte uses ionic and oxidation processes to produce pool water that is clean and safe from harsh salts and stinging chlorine.
Q: How does the ECOsmarte System work?
A: Simple. Every time your pump runs, the ECOsmarte oxygen electrodes deliver a non-chemical
shock to your water when the water passes through your pressure line. Once per week you test
your pH and copper levels. You will switch the button on your Electronic Control Unit and ionize
for 4 - 8 hours depending on your pool size and bather load. This will put copper in your pool
which is a great algaecide and deadly to viruses.
Your pool water will be comparable to the safe drinking water level according to the EPA. In fact, if you DRANK two gallons of Ecosmarte Pool water, you would ingest the amount of copper found in a multivitamin!
Q: How long do the copper bars last and how much do they cost to replace?
A: Life of the copper bars will depend on the length of your pool season, the calcium hardness of
the water and the size of your pool. Normally, they will last 3-5 years and cost only $95 to
replace. They can be replaced by the pool or spa owner with a screw driver.
And if all of that isn’t great enough, the company also donates 5% of their profits to environmental charities! Ecosmarte Pools used to only be sold on the Internet, but now the company is branching out to home-based businesses and Dealers. You can request pricing and product brochures on their website and see for yourself how an Ecosmarte pool will be a great way to have a pool that is safe and fun!
